Socioeconomic differences in Algerian fertility : a matter of age at marriage. Insights from 1998-census individual data

Out of any expectation, fertility fell down very rapidly in the last three decades of the past century. From 8.1 children per women in 1970 TFR reached 2.2 in 2001, almost exactly the replacement level. However, marital fertility reduced less (from 11.1 children per women in 1970 to 5.9 in 2001) and remained quite high.
While general fertility was strongly associated to indicators of the modernization like, urbanisation, level of education, women’ occupational activity, etc., marital fertility was not or very few. It seems clear that the influence of these pieces of modernization on fertility is mainly the result of their influence on age at marriage, which determines the beginning of the actual period of reproductive activity open to women, and much less that of contraception, which determines childbearing during the marriage.
We got the opportunity of accessing an extract of individual data from the 1998 census. Togather with aggregate data from all other available surveys (ENSP 1970, ENAF 1986, Papchild 1992, Pamfam 2001, MICS-3 2006) and censuses (1966, 1977, 1987, 1998, 2008), it helps to understand the factors of the Algerian fertility transition, especially, the link between socioeconomic characteristics, levels of fertility and marriage practices.